The assignment would seem
routine to anyone unfamiliar with the violent political climate on the southern
island of Mindanao. The journalists would
accompany a convoy of people who intended to file candidacy papers for
political clan leader Esmael Mangudadatu’s bid for governor of Maguindanao
province. Having been warned of a possible ambush, Mangudadatu would not travel
with the group but would instead send female family members and supporters, and
invite the press to go along, in the belief that women and independent
reporters would not be attacked. One reporter was troubled enough by rumors of
an assault that he called a military commander to request security but was told
that no protective escort would be deployed. Unnerved, he and two other
journalists decided not to go.

En route to Shariff Aguak,
the provincial capital, the journalists and Mangudadatu clan members were
ambushed by more than 100 heavily armed militiamen and led at gunpoint to a
remote clearing where large pits had been prepared. Thirty journalists and
two media support workers were shot and dumped into two mass graves in an
attack that took 57 lives altogether and gained notoriety around the world as
the Maguindanao massacre. Authorities charged a number of suspects linked to a
rival political clan, the ruling Ampatuans, including Andal Ampatuan Jr., mayor
of Dato Unsay. Witnesses quoted in local news reports accused the mayor himself
of shooting many of the victims. Ampatuan professed innocence and blamed the
massacre on a Muslim rebel group known to be active in the area.

Details of the killings,
the deadliest event for the press ever recorded by CPJ, emerged in an
authoritative fact-finding report compiled by four local press organizations
and a follow-up mission conducted by international groups, including CPJ.
Solutions to end the entrenched culture of violence and impunity are more
elusive.

While the scale of the attack was
unprecedented, it was not entirely unpredictable in the often lawless context of Philippine
politics. Before the massacre, CPJ had undertaken two missions to the country
in 2009 to express its deep concerns and conduct research into the culture of
impunity in media killings. In March, CPJ ranked the Philippines sixth on its annual Impunity
Index, which measures unsolved journalist killings as a percentage of total
population. Even before the massacre, the Philippines’
impunity ranking was the highest in the world for a peacetime democracy, behind
only war-ridden Iraq, Sierra Leone, Somalia,
Sri Lanka, and Colombia. It is
sure to rise when CPJ compiles its new index in 2010. Sixty-five journalists
have been murdered in the Philippines
in the past two decades, a death toll trailing only Iraq. Philippine authorities have
obtained convictions in just five murder cases during this time.

Yet the nation’s
leadership has consistently played down the gravity of the impunity problem. In
March, presidential spokesman Cerge Remonde discounted CPJ’s findings as an
“exaggeration.” His deflection was indicative of an official stance that has
allowed wayward local government officials, so frequently involved in media
killings in the Philippines,
to perpetrate crimes without fear of punishment—even, apparently, the
premeditated mass murder of 32 media workers.

Like the 42-year-old
Araneta, the press victims in Maguindanao were all local journalists, according
to the fact-finding report compiled by the National Union of Journalists of the
Philippines,
the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, the Freedom Fund for
Filipino Journalists, and MindaNews. Most of the victims were reporters and
photographers for Mindanao-based newspapers, although some were employed by
radio and television outlets.

“Nearly an entire
generation” of local journalists was wiped out, said the report, which noted
that most of the victims were married and had children. For those journalists
who remain, fear is a constant. Local reporters who spoke with CPJ lamented
that the security protocols they had implemented—traveling in large numbers to
mitigate risks, requesting that authorities provide security for dangerous
assignments—failed to save the lives of their friends and colleagues. Some of
the slain journalists had undergone security training, but Mike Dobbie, a
trainer for the International Federation of Journalists, said security
protocols for local reporting would need to be “entirely revised” given the
massacre and the strong possibility of more political violence in the run-up to
May 2010 elections.

Many local journalists
said they feared for their safety while reporting on the massacre’s aftermath.
Those fears were underscored by reports that unidentified men were
photographing journalists as they reported on the arrests of Ampatuan clan
members and the discovery of a massive underground armory said to belong to the
group. Illustrating the depth of the journalists’ concerns, several reports on
the killings ran without bylines or datelines in both national and local
newspapers.

Relatives of the slain
journalists told CPJ that they, too, were fearful that the politically powerful
suspects would evade justice, as has happened in so many previous media
killings in Mindanao. In their fact-finding
report, the local press groups found several troubling aspects to the official investigation,
including the apparent mishandling of evidence. The report noted that recovery
teams used a backhoe rather than shovels to extract victims’ remains from the
pits, a technique that likely compromised forensic evidence. “There was little
or no consideration given to preserving evidence,” the fact-finding team found,
and “no consideration given to avoid contamination of the crime scene.” Many
days after the massacre, retrieval teams had failed to gather used mobile phone
SIM cards and other evidence strewn about the crime scene.

There were also signs that police themselves
could have been involved in the killings.
Witnesses said vehicles with police markings were seen during the ambush, and
at least one Maguindanao police vehicle was unaccounted for in the aftermath.
Just three days before the massacre, six new police checkpoints were
established along the route the Mangudadatu convoy would take. The reason for
the new checkpoints was unclear.

When CPJ traveled to Mindanao in December, a local prosecutor assigned to
build the case against the accused described a lack of coordination between his
panel and the police officials who had gathered evidence. He also expressed
concern that his team members had insufficient resources to construct a case and
inadequate security to ensure their own safety.

The mishandling of
evidence, the intimidation of witnesses, the questions of official involvement,
and the lack of sufficient investigative resources all fit a disturbingly
familiar pattern in the Philippines, one that over the years has allowed the
killers of journalists to wiggle free of justice. Given the Ampatuan clan’s
political power, including its ties to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, could
even these horrific killings go unpunished?

In a meeting with
international and local press groups, including CPJ, press secretary Remonde
rejected any suggestion that the government be held directly accountable for
the Maguindanao massacre. He emphasized that Arroyo had attended the wakes of
victims and that the government would provide scholarships and compensation to
slain journalists’ family members. But without a clear commitment to protecting
journalists and breaking the cycle of impunity, there was no guarantee that the
Maguindanao massacre would be the Philippines’ last.

Shawn W. Crispin is CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. He conducted three
missions to the Philippines
during 2009, advocating and conducting research on the issue of impunity. CPJ’s
Global Campaign Against Impunity is underwritten by the John S. and James L.
Knight Foundation.